Previews

Unreal Tournament 2004 - Editor's Choice Edition

We take a sneak peek at the new content planned for the upcoming UT 2004 refresh.

Spiffy:

Three cool new vehicles; more Onslaught maps.

Iffy:

Not a lot of new content for UT 2004 diehards.

It's been a great year for the Unreal Tournament franchise. This past March, Unreal Tournament 2004 was released to near-unanimous acclaim, riding largely on the back of the new vehicle-infused Onslaught teamplay mode. The Unreal community has also been hard at work, flooding the Internet with stellar games like Frag Ops, Red Orchestra, and Deathball. Hoping to keep the excitement rolling, Epic and Atari will be releasing a "refresh" later this year -- called the Unreal Tournament 2004 Editor's Choice Edition -- which will add a few new vehicles and Epic-created maps to Onslaught, and should also include some of the best user-created mods released to date. For a look at the new goodies, we met with Epic's Cliff Bleszinski at a recent Atari press event, who showed off some of the new toys.

All told, Epic is adding three new vehicles to Onslaught: the Cicada, the Paladin, and the SPMA. The Cicada is a two-person air vehicle not unlike a super-sized Manta, with double-wide tilting air fans and the ability to go anywhere in the air instead of simply hovering over the ground. The driver can fire out with straight plasma bursts or lock on targets with the secondary fire, while the second position, located on the underbelly of the vehicle, contains a turret that can be used to shoot down enemies or can fire out chaff that can be used to distract incoming AVRiL missiles.

The other two new vehicles are ground-based, starting with the Paladin, a mid-range tank that rolls along on eight wheels. You can shell enemies as you cruise along, and there's also a special combo burst achieved by hitting the primary and secondary fire together that will send out a short burst of energy that will shield your vehicle briefly as well as fry anyone in the near area. The final addition is the six-wheeled Self Propelled Mobile Artillery -- or "SPMA," for short -- which can shell enemies with the primary fire, but has a deployable floating camera option in its secondary fire that, once positioned to your satisfaction, will shell your target from above.

Epic is creating "four to eight" new Onslaught maps for the Editor's Choice pack, and of the ones we saw, the most interesting was "Tricky" which resembled a cross between a circus ring and a skate park. Half-pipes littered the outdoor arena, and Bleszinski showed off his skills with the Scorpion buggy, doing mid-air twists and jumping off ramps through flaming hoops. It's hard to say if players will actually play the map with all the obstacles around, but it could be a springboard for players to engage in impromptu Daredevil competitions. Obviously, all the new maps will be designed to support all the new vehicles, and existing Onslaught maps will also be tweaked so they can be played with or without the new goodies. It's also expected that the bots will be able to use the new vehicles (although that wasn't yet working in the build we were shown).

The Editor's Choice pack will also include 10-12 user-created mods, all taken from the ongoing NVIDIA "Make Something Unreal" contest. The list of mods is still to be finalized, but among the ones being discussed are Air Buccaneers, Alien Swarm, Chaos UT2, Deathball, and Clone Bandits, a fairly insane post-apocalyptic mod that feature vehicles like the pink-tinted Lounge Tank and the rocket-powered Moscowboy motorcycle. While all these mods are already available for free, the inclusion in the new package should give the teams some added exposure to fans who might not otherwise be aware that they exist.

Sadly, it doesn't look like any official new Assault maps will be created for the new package, but six new characters are planned, including the return of the Necris. The UT 2004 Editors' Choice Edition should be released this upcoming November.